Sunset-colored dunes of volcanic ash make taking a poor photo impossible.

This lesser known Hearst estate is a fairytale village built from the stolen bones of historic European buildings.

A crumbling wizard is one of the final reminders of a roadside Middle Earth.

Treehouse motel and treehouse-building school.

A collection of colorful dinosaurs hidden in an actual rainforest.

This historic steamboat is scuttled just a few hundred feet from where it was built over a hundred years ago.

Commonly referred to as the most photographed Victorian home in the United States.

Canyon walls shrouded in ferns.

These cinderblock farmhouses were actually World War II radar stations in disguise.

This 19th-century museum inside of a lighthouse is only accessible during low tide.

A lighthouse built to save lives that took quite a few with its treacherous location.

An ominous concrete cube cuts a dystopian silhouette atop this California mountain.

The world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory continues to report on the stars.

Subterranean house made out of a grain silo, located in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

A strange house built only at night, with rumored mystic inspiration.

Housed in a memorial lighthouse, this museum relays the history of surfing, beginning with the antics of royal Hawaiian teenagers.

This concrete ship has had four careers - World War I tanker, floating amusement park, fishing pier, and artificial reef.

The oldest lighthouse on America's west coast no longer needs keepers, yet they maintain the site anyhow.

Two rocks in a perpetual kiss and one of "the most romantic spot in America."

Once America’s most beautiful army base, this abandoned military fort on the coast of Monterey Bay has been left to the elements.

Life in this isolated, hilltop lighthouse was lonely, but it sure was lovely.

Centuries of crashing waves carved out this small hole in the rock, which lights up at certain parts of the year.

This Big Sur waterfall drops 80 feet directly into the Pacific Ocean, and inspired the hillside house up top.

The ruins of the castle that chemicals built.